Reporter Jeff Valin interviews Alesha Fuller. Fuller is among the fast food workers striking to get their pay raised to $15 per hour. Why $15? Why not $20? Or $30? The level they’re demanding is arbitrary.

Valin asks the single mom, “How much of a difference would it be to make $15 an hour for you?”

Fuller replies, “That would be a major difference. I will get a lot, a lot of things done that I really need done right now. And that $15 an hour, that would mean I would have to work a little less days instead of every day, all day.”

You mean, like the rest of us?

At this point, I’ll turn and deliver the Boring Guy’s Minimum Wage Anecdote. In my junior year of college I was working a minimum wage job at a radio station when Congress hiked the minimum wage. Like most small market stations, ours existed on a tight budget. When the minimum wage got hiked, I survived and got a tiny pay raise but management fired several staff. They just couldn’t afford to keep as many of us around. It wasn’t management’s fault. This happens every time the minimum wage gets hiked.

There wasn’t any less work to do, by the way. There were just fewer people around to do the work we still had to do. I ended up picking up a few more hours, not less.

Fuller might be shocked to find out which side of the firing line she’ll be on if her demands are met. But if those demands are met, there will be a firing line.

Bryan Preston has been a leading conservative blogger and opinionator since founding his first blog in 2001. Bryan is a military veteran, worked for NASA, was a founding blogger and producer at Hot Air, was producer of the Laura Ingraham Show and, most recently before joining PJM, was Communications Director of the Republican Party of Texas.

Heres a novel idea don't become a single mother. Take a Quarter and keep your damn legs closed until you get an education and get married. Since the 1960's it's been well documented that those in single parent families are more likely to be poor. According to a Census Bureau report the poverty rate for children in single female-headed households was 40.9% last year, compared to 8.8% for children of married couples.

You see, there isn't an income/expense balance sheet or anything like that, just inexhaustible profits in the corporate coffers! All we have to do is get those greedy Scrooge McDucks to open their vaults and double their wage-expenses (and payroll taxes and benefits, based upon a percentage of that wage)...It's not like we'll see an immediate doubling of prices.

But see, that just opens the door to Federal Price Controls to go with Federal Wage Controls to go with Federal Hiring/Firing Controls to go with Federal mandates as to what job you will be working, Comrade.

If she is, as the story states, and she made no correction to the statement, she only works "part-time", HOW, does she work, as she puts it at the end, "...every day, all day." And, if she's a part-time employee, why is most of her time spent at work?

great..so hike her wages to $15/hr and schedule her for one hour a week...her hourly wage has been increased like she wants and she has all the time she needs. she has nothing to complain about anymore.

The key moment in the piece was when the reporter began his interview by confirming that Alesha is a "single mother" - and Alesha just beams at the mention of her status as one of those who sacrifice so much....

Its as though the reporter had said she was a decorated veteran by the way she reacts with such pride.

And THIS is exactly why Alesha and so many others are in such a condition - but I'd like to place a good bit of the blame on those who have made it a goal to remove any amount of stigma from unwed motherhood and indeed created a society where Alesha is actually PROUD of her status

Thank you liberals - thanks so much - the lives of so many Alesha's and their unfortunate offspring - doomed statistically to all sorts of problems - can be laid at your feet. You demanded we cheer for single mothers and here we are - what a complete disaster.

One of the best type of fast food places I ate at in Japan was the "ticket machine" beef bowl shops like Yoshinoya. They usually have one or two cooks in the back, one waitress, and lots of seats. When you come up to the store, you go to the ticket machine outside, look at the names and pictures of dishes, punch the button underneath the picture(s), punch your drink button, and put your money in. You get back a ticket and your change, go inside the shop and hand the waitress your ticket. She comes back in a few minutes with your bowl. No order confusion, no language barrier, and low overhead. Of course, in Japan it's safe enough to keep machines filled with cash outside the door of a fast food place, in the US they'd probably have to be inside, but a similar idea could work here. I remember one Taco Bell that experimented with something like this back in the late 80's, but I believe it failed because they were still more expensive than counter people. With cheap tech and expensive people, I bet it will catch on better, presuming the unions allow it.

The trick is- you could raise a family of 4 on a minimum wage income combined with all the wealth transfer programs already in place. Of course you could. Any time they show those 'families below the poverty level' statistics that are so worrisome... realize they aren't including any of the public assistance in that number (EIC, SNAP, medicaid, etc).

But thats not what we're talking about. Nobody is (in good faith) arguing that people are starving to death, or cant afford housing, etc. They are arguing that you cant have a MIDDLE CLASS lifestyle on minimum wage (plus wealth transfers). You cant afford the new iphone, travel for vacation, run your air conditioning, have a nice car and nice clothes. Thats where the fight is at. Suddenly a middle class lifestyle is an entitlement.

And as nice as it would be if it were possible, in practice guaranteeing that kind of thing is a horrible disaster. A lot of people work really, really hard to have that kind of lifestyle. Now if their neighbors can work less hard for less hours and achieve the same results, what do the hard workers learn? That they are chumps.

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